My little girl

See that little girl toddling around in the ladybug bathing suit?





She's getting to be pretty definitively a little girl these days, but kissable hints of babyishness still remain; those (long!) chubby legs, the cuddly way she lays her head in my lap when she's tired, her enduring love for her "ba ba." But she can say "ba ba" now, when she wants one. That's new.

She has an all-encompassing passion for cats. She chases her cat friends around and around the house, grabbing onto their tails with a little vise grip. She has learned to make the "tsk tsk" sound to call them over to her. She greets them when she sees them: "Hi, Cat!"

She can identify every cat in every one of her books. She has also learned the sound a pig makes and tries to imitate it, making a kind of coughing sound because she doesn't know yet how to snort the way mama does. She loves books with peekaboo flaps and lifts them so enthusiastically that she accidentally tears them off and we find them stuck to our feet days later.

She waves wildly to everybody she meets and isn't content if they don't wave back. I have a secret love in my heart for everybody who does. She has learned about babies, and she loves to see them. "Bee bee!" she cries, when she sees one in its mother's arms at the splashground, or in a picture, or on TV.

She loves to watch videos of herself as a baby on the laptop. She kneels and puts her face close to the screen to watch, scrutinizing every detail, as though there is going to be a test.

She is good at giving kisses. Sometimes she will lay them on thick in a string of five or six open-mouthed busses: "A-WAH! A-WAH! A-WAH!" Sometimes she shakes her head no, smiling because she knows she's teasing and she likes being in on the joke. Some people only warrant a blown kiss, a little chubby hand that flies to her mouth and lingers there, because, yes, hands are still delicious.

She's a funny little girl, who loves to laugh, who gets angry because the ice cubes from my drink are too cold to hold but she doesn't want to put them down, who finds a soft pillow on the floor and lays down to drink her bottle in peace and comfort. She points to things that she finds novel or interesting, and the list grows longer every day. Every day she takes a few more steps on her own...but she still looks back over her should to break into a grin when she sees we're watching.

She's my little girl, and I love her so.

Learning CAN Be Fun.

Do any of you remember Discovery Toys? They were an AWESOME part of my childhood. Toys and games that truly were educational, helping to make learning fun and relatively painless. My favorites were the Think-Links and those little wooden shapes that you could lay out in different patterns to make various pictures.

But the best, the very best thing of all, was the Sounds Like Fun cassette tape. My sister and I listened to that all the time, had every song on there memorized.

So when, a year or so after Carl and I were married, we went to a county fair and I saw a Discovery Toys booth there, I immediately looked to see if they had Sound Like Fun.

I wasn't as impressed with some of their offerings - as with most companies, the quality seemed to have slipped since I was a child (though their marble sets were still COOL), but oh joy! oh bliss! they had Sounds Like Fun in CD form.

I bought it, for the future when we had kids. And then I made Carl listen to it on the way back from the fair. Because I am EVIL. (And yes, I sang along with every. single. song.)

We started playing it for Joy when she was a newborn, and Grace as well. Now, it is their favorite CD, and they have all the songs memorized. It has helped them learn phonics without even realizing it, counting skills, the months of the year, good manners, and how to count to 10 in Spanish, plus more.

Now they are calling it Sounds Like Learning but it's still the same CD. If you have a chance to get one, do so. It's amazing how much easier it is to memorize and absorb things when they are set to music. The fact that I have never taken a Spanish class in my life but can easily say "Good morning, how are you," and "I'm very well, thank you, and how are you?" in comprehensible Spanish is proof to that!

Lessons

Joy tends to be pretty withdrawn, unsure of herself in new situations. So after much discussion, Carl and I decided to sign her up for skating lessons this winter. She already loves the ice, and we figured it would be a great chance for her to learn that she can, in fact, do something without a parent, grandparent, or aunt right there with her.

(Plus, you know, the earlier she starts preparing for her Olympic career the better)

Ahem.

I wouldn't go with her for her first day of lessons. She panics more and clings more to me, and I wanted to give her every chance to not give in to fear. So Carl took her, and I stayed home with Gracie and a knotted stomach.

She loved it. "And I wasn't even a little bit scared!" she crowed as she leaped into my arms when they got home.

"Are you excited for next time?" I asked.

"YES."

YES.

This time, at least, we made the right call.

According to Carl, she was pretty much just humoring the pros by using the bucket. They quickly caught on that she didn't, in fact, need it.

Actually sitting and listening - amazing! Instead of tuning out and doing her own thing! Incredible what happens when someone-not-your-mother teaches you!

So very ready to go it alone, but still following the pro's directions. Yay Joy!

Parallel play

Baby A. is the son of J.D.'s oldest friend, Patrick, and his wife, Jamie, both of whom have become my friends. I don't like them because they are J.D.'s friends and because I have to--I like them for themselves, because I want to.

Baby A. is four months older than Lulu. I actually got my positive pregnancy test the day of Jamie's baby shower. When A. was born, I had just crossed the threshold into the second trimester, and holding Baby A. was a little bit magical for me, not only because he was my friends' kid and I loved him instantly, because I was starting to see that there was one of these soft, squishy bundles waiting at the end of the road for me, too.

When I was on bed rest, Baby A. and his parents came to cheer me up. After Lulu was born, when she finally came home from the NICU, Baby A. was one of her first visitors.

From the very beginning, Jamie and I would laugh about how much fun they'd have together when they grew up, all the adventures/scrapes/mischief they would get into. We couldn't wait to see it happen. We watched to see it happen.

But for the most part? The kids ignored each other. At best they were extremely wary of each other.


Sometimes Baby A. seemed curious about Lulu, and would kind of test the waters by hitting at her. When Lu didn't hit back, he'd crawl away. For Lulu's part, I'm not sure she really knew that Baby A. existed. Sometimes she'd focus her eyes on his face for a second, but then they'd slide away toward something else. Four months was too big a gap; they weren't on the same developmental playing field.

Until this weekend--when Lulu finally caught up. J.D., Patrick, Jamie and I spent the day at their cabin in the mountains...and the kids spent the day playing together--actually playing together!--on the floor in front of the picture windows.


Sophie the Giraffe was the rock that finally broke the ice. Baby A. reached for it--Lulu snatched it back. Baby A. gave up, very chivalrously, and spent an hour or so gently feeding Lu her other toys in the most gentlemanlike fashion. He knows how to treat a lady.

When they got tired of the toys, Lu lay on the floor and Baby A. crawled over her a few times and even got a little fresh, taking a bite or two of her cloth-diaper-covered behind. Then he crawled away to eat a bug. There was some brief static over a bottle that both babies wanted to claim for themselves, but it was soon forgotten. As Lulu fell asleep on the floor, Baby A. stroked and patted her hair. Maybe with a little more force than was strictly necessary, but the right sentiment was still there.

I love that Lulu has a friend. I hope they will be friends their whole lives. And I can't wait to see what kind of mischief they'll get into, together.

Gracie Days

I love this picture of Gracie, even in all its blurriness. 

It captures so much of her, her enthusiasm for everything, the speed with which she attacks life, even the open mouth as she takes it all in.

She's getting to be a lot of fun. She's always had a decided personality, but these days we're actually starting to understand it. 

For example: the other day, I asked her if she wanted carrots with her lunch.

"Nope!"

"Peas?" I asked.

"Nope! Just hummus and chips."

Note - hummus and chips were not on the lunch menu at all.

A few months ago, that would have translated into tears and frustration instead of her actually being able to share what she wanted.

She ended up with carrots and peas, but at least we were able to talk about why chips and hummus are better for a snack, not lunch.

She can pronounce her sister's name, or at least the nickname, now. I kind of miss the baby babble, but it is sweet to hear her holler, "Hey Joy, what you doin'?" from the other end of the house.

Yesterday I picked her up to take her upstairs for her nap, and she snuggled down into my arms and said with a contented sigh,

"I sleepin' now, Mom."

Babies are darling, but I enjoy kids so much more from age two up. These days are still as full of work and frustration as the baby days, but the rewards, for me and my personality at least, are so much greater. From answering Joy as she asks about all the different definitions for the word "mean," to listening to Grace shriek with laughter as I chase her through the house, or tell me exactly what she wants for breakfast, there's always something each day to make me laugh in delight.

One word

This weekend, we had a lot going on. Family in town, Lulu's christening, the tail end of a fall clean... On Friday, I was sorting through baby clothes to send to Adrienne when I heard it. A small voice babbling, and then the babble resolving itself into two syllables that sent a jolt of recognition through me.

Ma. Ma.

At first I thought it was a fluke, but Lulu did it again, haltingly, and then again, growing more confident each time.

Ma. Mamamama. Ma, ma.
Mama.

I don't think she knew what she was saying. I don't think she was calling out to me or anything like that. Lu was playing with her toys, totally oblivious to me standing a foot away. But still, my heart was full. I'd dreamed my whole life of hearing some small creature say that word, and from the first moment I saw Lulu's face, when they handed her to me for that brief moment before taking her down to the NICU, I'd wondered how it would sound coming out of her own particular mouth. So when I finally did hear it, my eyes brimmed.

Not because of the word she'd chosen--well, not only because of that--but because it was the first real word she'd ever said, and when she said it, I couldn't help but think of all of the other words she'll say in her life. I like this. I want that. I love you. This word was the first in an impossibly long string.

I won't be privy to all the words she'll say in her life, but I was there to hear her first word. I was there at the start.

All weekend, as I cooked and cleaned and wrapped presents and laughed with friends and family, I kept hearing it, from across the room. Mama? Mama!



Each time, just in case, I called back, "Hi, baby. Mama's here."

Autumn Leaves

On Friday, we drove through the Adirondacks on our way to visit my folks for the weekend. It was glorious, especially in the southern part where everything was either at or just barely past peak. I wanted to stop EVERYWHERE to take pictures.

But we waited until we got to Lake Placid (which is one of my favorite places in the whole world and almost as much of a home to me as where I grew up, because of all the time I spent there in my college years, working almost every single weekend of the fall and winter at various sporting events) and could get some lunch as well as pictures.

Except then my camera quit working on me. And it was raining, so I couldn't take the time to mess with it without it and us getting soaked. So we grabbed lunch and drove the rest of the way up to my parents'. No pictures at all.

(We fixed the camera once we got up here, by the way. The lens had some dust in it.)

I was a little disappointed at first, but then I got thinking about the nature of beauty. Isn't, maybe, half of what makes some things beautiful, their transient nature? If the trees were always this dizzying array of golden, orange, and red, would we notice them as much, or would we take them for granted after a while?

Maybe, by not being able to capture the whiteness of a mountain cascade spreading like a veil across the dark rocks, the reflection of red and yellow in a lake at the bottom of a mountain, the colors spreading across the horizon as far as the eye could see, maybe by only having to fix them in my memory instead of relying on the camera to record them for me ...

Maybe I appreciated them more.

And maybe, if I think of these days with small children as beautiful in their passing, if I look at potty training, and self-control teaching, and mealtime struggles, and never ever getting enough sleep, as memories getting locked away in my heart instead of tasks sucking up my life ...

Maybe I'll appreciate them more, too.

Not to say I won't still get frustrated and tired and occasionally longing for the days when they are older. But if I think of these days as fleeting as the autumn leaves, it might make it easier for me to delight in them.

The Talking, It Never Stops

"Oh, she's so quiet. I've never met a four-year-old who is so quiet. How do you do it?"

I grin sheepishly and mumble something about "she's not this quiet at home, she's just quiet when we're out," and they shake their heads in disbelief and then we escape.

~

This morning, I woke up to one child climbing into bed with me, and the sound of the other one downstairs. Despite the fact that Mamma was in bed with Gracie, and Papa was in the shower, Joy was chattering away already, having a nice little conversation with her imaginary friends and the small plastic animals that are scattered through our entire house. I groaned and pulled the covers back over my head.

~

Joy still has yet to give us the constant "why" questions, but she never stops talking, just the same. Most of her questions are "what." "What are you doing, Mamma? What is that? What did you say? What's this picture? What time is it? What are we having for supper? Where's Papa? What's he doing? Where's Grace? Is she napping? Am I not napping? I don't take naps, do I? What's that? What did you say, Mamma? What does that mean?"

All. The. Time.

Except when we're in public, of course, when she turns meek and quiet and barely squeaks out two words if pressed.

~

I am an introvert, as is Carl. Oddly enough, Joy is too, for the most part, except for this perfectly-normal phase every child goes through as their eyes are opening to the world and their understanding takes off by leaps and bounds - the stage of questioning and wondering and wanting to share their excitement over life with the people they love best. And it sounds wonderful, and it is, but Oh. My. Goodness. I just want some peace and quiet once in a while. I can be a chatterbox when I'm around my closest friends, occasionally, but most of the time I crave silence. Unlike my sister, who gets mopey when things are too quiet, I like the calm, the steady, the silence.

~

Yesterday, I sent Carl and the littles to run some of their own errands while I went to Joann's and Target all by myself. It was heaven, wandering through the aisles by myself, no little person constantly asking what every single item was (and no husband anxiously asking if every item going into the cart was really absolutely necessary.

And yet, ironically enough, after forty minutes of that, I pulled out my cell phone and found myself calling my sister to chat through the rest of my shopping. The alone-ness was too much, and I needed contact with someone.

Joy, she is training me well.

Mamma, I'm sitting on a pumpkin! What color is this pumpkin? Is it orange? Mamma, is the sky blue today? Isn't it a nice day? Do we like pumpkins? Am I going to paint a pumpkin sometime? Are you taking a picture? Mamma, what is that face you're making?

Perchance to dream

Lulu has always been a champion sleeper. (She gets that from me.) Her first few weeks at home after the NICU, we actually had to wake her up to feed her. When people ask how long she sleeps at a stretch, I usually lie and say "five or six hours," because 1) I do not want them to hate me and 2) I think it might sound kind of sinister and suspicious to admit the real number is usually something more like 10. The truth is that Lulu dozes on and off in her swing starting at about 10:00. I wake her up to feed her at midnight. Then I put her in her crib, and she sleeps straight through to 7 AM, and then usually another hour, after she's eaten her breakfast.

We thought we'd gotten lucky. We got bed rest and hospital visits and fifteen days in the NICU, but we also got a baby who SLEEPS.

In the past few days, however, all of that has gone to shit and now we are no better than the rest of you tired parents.

It all started when Lulu got came down with her first cold. She seems in good spirits and hasn't run a temperature. The only time she seems ill at all is at night, when she horks and burbles and snuffles herself awake.

Second of all, I think we are entering the four-month sleep regression. Lu hit the six-month mark last week, but her adjusted age is four months. Even before she'd gotten sick, she had started to wake up more frequently, and the quality of her sleep seemed changed, more restless.

Third, Lulu learned how to roll.

When I say that Lulu learned how to roll, I am only half telling the truth because she has only HALF learned how to roll. She can flip herself from back to stomach, but she can't yet flip herself from stomach to back. All night, she rolls in her crib, wakes up to find herself on her belly and the world utterly, horribly changed, and screams. Sometimes she gets her foot stuck in the bars of her crib, for added terror and fury. Sometimes she gets them both stuck. FIVE ALARM CRY, when that happens.

Lulu hasn't slept for more than two hours at a stretch since Thursday.

Which means that neither have we.

But Lulu doesn't seem to be feeling it like we do. Every morning, she wakes up as happy and fresh as if she'd had her full 10 hours. How does she do this? It has to have something to do with the energy of youth or a different metabolism or black magic or a blip in the matrix. Because there is no way that Lulu is getting MORE sleep than we are. Especially because a few times when she cried in the night we both played dead and pretended we didn't hear her. And then there were a couple of legitimate times we actually didn't hear her, so depleted were our brains of energy and stamina and sleeeeeeep.

J.D. and I stumbled through this weekend. On Saturday, we saw a friend skate in a roller derby and wanted to cry with jealousy at the display of raw energy. On Sunday, we went to watch football with friends and squinted blearily at the TV, fumbled with glasses, dropped nachos on the carpet, and generally behaved like total assholes. We draped ourselves over the handles of the cart in the checkout line at Safeway. People kept asking, concernedly, "Are you all right?" And we do not live in an area of the country where people usually give a shit how you are doing unless you are literally dying right in front of them. And sometimes not even then.

All through this, our baby cooed and smiled her gummy smile at strangers, and laughed her husky little laugh over and over and nommed the face off her Sophie the Giraffe teether and was generally adorable and cute and sweet and nothing like the raging hellbeast that she has been from 7 PM to 7 AM for the past three nights. Not a peep from her, even when her diaper leaked and soaked her pants or when I slipped and banged her arm while putting her in her carseat.

"She is such a doll," people said, over and over. "Does she EVER fuss?" And then I laughed and then I cried and then the person I was talking to took two giant steps away from me, slooooowly, with no sudden movements, and pretended to be totally engrossed in the back of a cereal box or the remote control or whatever was closest at hand and could also be used as a potential weapon against the crackpot crazy lady with the unbrushed hair who was gibbering about feet and colds and sleep regression.

We have a plan for tonight, though.


That, my dears, is a swing in our bedroom. And strapped securely into the swing is a baby stuffed with enough toxic, non-organic formula to put a grown man into a full-blown food coma.

Here's hoping it works.

6 months

Likes:

• Rolling from front to back
  
• Physically abusing Captain Calamari
• Eating solid food
  
• Keeping Up with the Kardashians
  

Dislikes:

• Rolling from back to front
  
• Sleeping in
  
• Long rides in the car

Happy half-birthday, Baby!

Love,

Your tired (but happy) Mama

(Pre) School Daze

I was so proud of myself for figuring out a school schedule for doing preschool with Joy this year - I felt like a real homeschooling mom, with a schedule on the refrigerator and everything.

Until we started this morning, and I realized that I did not take into account my child's devouring interest in all things school related. She tore through the planned materials in less than half the time I had anticipated, leading me to sprint upstairs and dig out Thursday's workbook for her to do as well. Not only is she doing more books each day than I had expected, she is going to end up going through them in a shorter amount of time than I had expected, which means I am already ordering more workbooks for her, and looking at the very real possibility that we'll be finished in what I thought was a half-year's curriculum in two months.

Yay! And also: what have I gotten myself into?

I am so very much not a natural teacher. I know preschool workbooks and curriculum aren't necessary for this age, but I am terrible at trying to come up with fun ways to teach these basic pre-kindergarten skills. So the curriculum saves me from frustrations and headaches, and gives my girls a great way to learn. Having a kid this smart already, pushing me beyond what I was expecting (and I'm her mother, so you know I obviously think Joy's a genius) (Grace is a genius too, only hers is more the creative kind, not so much the academic kind. Also, I think she's a musical prodigy, because she already has an opera singer's range - just ask anyone who's ever listened to her cry), is both exciting and kind of freaking me out.

You want to give your kid the best of everything. You want them to have every opportunity to reach their fullest potential. You don't want to push them, or place your goals on them, but you do not want to see them fall short because of your failures.

And so, having a child who is already so academically inclined is a little scary. What if I don't give her the right materials, and end up having her hate school because I didn't teach her properly? What if I push too hard and she gets frustrated? What if I don't push hard enough and she gets bored and loses interest? What if I start assuming she's headed for greatness, but this is really fairly common? What if she is uncommonly gifted, and I miss it because I don't want to be one of those mothers?

And so I tentatively advance one half step at a time, holding my breath at every moment, hoping I'm doing the right thing.

And here I thought the baby stage was hard.

Open wide

In the past week or so, Lulu has discovered her mouth. If she's holding something--a rattle, a stuffed bear--it goes straight to her lips. If she's not holding anything, she crams her hands in there as far back as they will go. At night, I hear her in her crib, slobbering away, and in the morning, the arms of her sleeper are wet to the elbow.

This makes me incredibly anxious. I had thought I could put off babyproofing for a few more months. I have spent a lot of time and money on therapy so that I don't walk into a room and immediately focus on all the things in it that can kill me or a loved one. Babyproofing requires me to do just that, only times a thousand million, since the loved one in peril is my tiny, perfect, helpless, defenseless only child. I have been consoling myself with the fact that Lulu hasn't yet mastered the pincer grip--the only things she can pick up and steer toward her tender esophagus are things that are far too big to go down it.

But it appears I can't put it off too much longer. Today during tummy time, I noticed Lulu fussing and straining forward toward something on the floor just off the edge of her playmat. Upon closer inspection, I saw it was a penny. My genius child had found a way around those pincer-grip skills she's so sorely lacking: since she couldn't pick the penny up, she was trying to LAUNCH HERSELF FORWARD onto it, mouth first. In order to swallow it, I guess, and commit baby hari-kari.


Why, WHY, despite this new oral fascination, will my child still refuse to take a pacifier? It is one of the great mysteries of the world.